Our body clocks have a huge influence on our sleep.
A new study now suggests that our body clocks experience a pair of 'rush hours' - periods of large shifts in activity just before dawn and just before dusk.
Researchers examined samples from various parts of the body that are affected by our body clocks and found that 43% of genes that are involved in protein manufacture changed their activity throughout the day.
Since different genes have different activity patterns according to the body tissue they are in, researchers conservatively estimated that more than half of all genes would show daily changes if all tissues were sampled.
It's already known that some drugs work better when taken at certain times of the day.
This research is important since it could help us better time our consumption of medications, allowing us to take them at the optimal time for our bodies.
When you consider that as many as 56 of the 100 best selling drugs and 119 of the 250 World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines work on genes that vary their activity according to the time of day, this research could be groundbreaking.
Source: PNAS
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Last updated: February 3, 2015
